Pool_2

had very little money. He spoke of depressed economics, and blood from stones, and historical outcomes of ventures in the old defunct silk mill town as both men at the head of the table got visibly redder and redder. But then, just one hair from the end of the rope they allowed him, for the sake of simulated process, he surprised them. "But its none of that!" He pointed aggressively toward the man who chaired the meeting as he proclaimed the crippling effect of the disappearances and the local population's fear of lines and failure of the organization to respond. "What? What lines? What disappearances?" was demanded. The once cowering speaker, totally resigned to fate, recalled memos of specific dates which, obviously unread by the chair, listed company personnel who just vanished, "...working for us on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday then poof! Gone! No communication. No telling what was done or left to be done or impossible to do or whatever, anything. Gone. How the hell am I supposed to continue what that person was doing when nobody knows what he did?" He then recalled another memo, waving a copy overhead, also unread, which reported a black line painted on an office door that might just as well have been a health department notice of plague. Not only would nobody go into that office, all who would otherwise have gone - quit. Immediately. "We couldn't even get a painter to repaint the damn door," he rambled to the unexpected entertainment of the group. The table was now encircled by faces with twisted half cocked smiles of mistrust. Was this for real? Did this speaker really think such a cock and bull story would fly? Yet there was one person who was not so disbelieving, an important one, standing, Big Johnson had heard of odd stuff in the North Ward before. The speaker's meandering account was broken by the chair's demand, "In your opening remarks you, I forget how you phrased it, but this was not isolated. More than